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Did you help design the B-17, or know someone who did?

Whenever the Liberty Belle bomber arrives in a new city, World War II veterans turn out to share stories, reminisce and watch the restored plane fly.

Don Brooks, who can take a lot of the credit for restoring the Liberty Belle, says the plane’s cross-country tour is designed to honor the quietly courageous veterans.

This upcoming weekend in Seattle, a visiting Boeing B-17 should draw a set of citizens who are just as important as those who flew it: the folks who designed it.

“It’s great to be able to bring a B-17 back to Boeing Field,” Brooks said Monday. “That’s where they all started.”

At one point in the 1930s, Boeing was heavily losing money and bet the future of the company on the B-17, according to HistoryLink.org.

Of more than 12,000 B-17s that Boeing built, fewer than 100 exist today and just 14 are in flying condition. Nearly 5,000 were lost in combat. After World War II, many were sold for scrap and turned into pots and pans.

Brooks founded the nonprofit Liberty Foundation in 2002 and began restoring the Liberty Belle shortly after. This particular bomber was built in 1945 in Burbank, Calif., and never saw combat.

Dubbed the “flying fortress,” the B-17 carried 13 .50-caliber machine guns and 10 bombs that weighed 500 pounds each. The planes flew by the hundreds during World War II, darkening the skies in carpet-bomb-style raids.

The Liberty Belle’s armaments are still in place but are nonfunctional.

The public is invited to take flights on the B-17 this Saturday and Sunday. The flights take off from the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..